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Sherlock Holmes Symposium

October 2013

This year's symposium celebrates the 10th anniversary of the remarkable collection of written works and memorabilia of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle contained in the Newberry's C. Frederick Kittle Collection of Doyleana. The program is free and open to all Sherlockians and the general public. Light refreshments will be served.

This year's event will feature the following speakers:

Working with the Kittle Collection

Newberry President David Spadafora

The C. Frederick Kittle Collection of Doyleana has now been at the Newberry for a decade. David Spadafora, President of the Newberry Library, will discuss the collection’s contents and the tools available for using it. He will focus on The White Company to provide an illustration of how research can be advanced by the collection – and how an understanding of Doyle’s interests can reveal important features of his times.

Conan Doyle, Nineteenth-century Man

Jon Lellenberg, BSI

When Arthur Conan Doyle wrote his first Sherlock Holmes tale in 1886, A Study in Scarlet, and set it in both Victorian London and the American West, he had never lived in London nor visited the United States. Many have wondered, therefore, what his sources were for his descriptions of those places. Jon Lellenberg will reveal the unexpected discovery that he and Daniel Stashower made about Conan Doyle's sources for A Study in Scarlet and other early Sherlock Holmes tales when they were preparing publication of Conan Doyle's first attempted novel, The Narrative of John Smith. Jon Lellenberg is co-author of Arthur Conan Doyle: A Life in Letters, and author of other books about Sherlock Holmes and his creator. Lellenberg and Daniel Stashower's edition of Conan Doyle's The Narrative of John Smith (written in 1883/1884), was published by the British Library in 2011. Both Jon Lellenberg and Dan Stashower are members of Chicago’s The Hounds of the Baskerville (sic) Sherlockian scion.

Recreating Sherlock Holmes’ World

Exhibit Design Group, LLC

Sherlock Holmes was the world's first scientific detective, and behind that creation lay not only A. Conan Doyle's medical education at Edinburgh University, but keen perception about how various sciences could be applied to the detection and solution of crime. On October 11, at the Oregon Museum of Science & Industry, a major exhibition on Sherlock Holmes and forensic science will open, and subsequently tour for six or seven years through science and history museums in America, Canada, and Europe. Much of its planning, design, and fabrication has been done locally, for example by award-winning theatrical set designer Todd Rosenthal of Northwestern University, and at Ravenswood Studios in Lincolnwood. A team of the exhibition's planners, designers, fabricators, props experts, and videographers will present a stunning, images-and-video-rich look at this exhibition, especially its "Dr. Conan Doyle's Study" and "221B Sitting-Room" sets, and answer your questions about what went into this greatest of all Sherlock Holmes exhibitions.